Quote Originally Posted by hayleymajayley View Post
So this is my bike. It's a Lapierre, not sure of the model or anything. It's a women's bike. I just got it last summer. I don't know much about bikes, I just got it cuz it was pretty and I liked the frenchish name. My boyfriend and I took our bikes in to get a tune up a few weeks ago and the tech told me that looking at the gears he could tell that my bike is made for going fast, and not good for hills. This totally freaked me out! For one thing, I am soooo not fast. Also, my boyfriend and I are doing the STP (Seattle to Portland- 202 miles in 2 days) in July, which has 30 miles of uphill terrain, with an uphill altitude of 1,951 feet. Can you tell from that if it's a big hill? Haha I feel so dumb, I'm just scared that I'm going to have to ride up some giant hill and die because my bike sucks at hills!
Hi Hayley. Well, if you are doing 202 miles by July, you better start riding some hills before you go and putting some mileage in! Once you start doing this, you will see pretty quickly if your bike is geared to high for you.

The bike tech (mechanic) who worked on your bike probably noticed that your bike is geared high not low. What this means is that the cassette on the back (on your rear wheel) has a bunch of round gears with teeth on them. The more teeth, the lower the gear (or easier) the gear. He probably noticed that you do not have a very large gear in the back.

The opposite thinking works for the chain rings up front (where you chain runs over). The smaller these are, the lower the gear.

You can change out all of this on your bike. You can add a cassette with gears with more teeth; and you can even change your chain rings to put a larger one on the inside. I cannot tell you what would work for you since I do not know what you have and cannot tell what the cassette looks like on your bike since it is on the opposite side of the bike than your picture.

Any reputable bike shop can explain these things to you and recommend gearing that would complement your riding style, i.e. beginner

Hope this helps spoke